{"id":72884,"date":"2014-06-19T18:27:14","date_gmt":"2014-06-19T22:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=72884"},"modified":"2014-06-20T14:36:38","modified_gmt":"2014-06-20T18:36:38","slug":"over-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/19\/over-there\/","title":{"rendered":"Over There"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"cupidity\"<\/a>

R. Ferro, Cupidity – Greed<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n

Lately I\u2019ve been listening to the excellent BBC documentary World War I<\/em>, which you can download and then listen to, incongruously, while waiting on line at the grocery store. The series presents the listener with a multifaceted portrait of the Great War, but\u2014for obvious reasons, given the topic\u2014it\u2019s not exactly a laugh a minute.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s part of what makes the British Library\u2019s new exhibition, \u201cEnduring War: Grit, Grief, and Humour,\u201d so surprising. Of course, people have always laughed and joked and made the best of awful situations\u2014resilience is a marvelous thing. But the lighter side of World War I hasn\u2019t come in for much scrutiny.<\/p>\n

The exhibition is multifaceted: there are propaganda posters, excerpts from Rupert Brooke\u2019s war journals, harrowing accounts of gassings and shell-shock, and horrifying casualty numbers. But along with this, the curators have made a point of highlighting soldiers\u2019 darkly humorous letters and joke postcards; photos of servicemen goofing off; and satirical excerpts from the morale-boosting publication Honk! The voice of the benzine lancers<\/em>. <\/p>\n

If you\u2019re wondering whether I\u2019m reporting this live from the British Library\u2019s Folio Room, let me just say: I wish. But the library\u2019s World War I archive page <\/a>is absolutely fantastic. I spent literal hours learning about army chaplains, war dogs, civilian diets, trenchfoot remedies. The range of materials is enormous: you can see both the original manuscript of \u201cDulce et Decorum Est\u201d and read about \u201cthe presence and variety of swearing<\/a> within World War One ranks and how its use bonded or divided soldiers.\u201d To wit,<\/p>\n

\n

If swearing was part of the brutalizing process of the war, it was also capable of wit and invention. A devious and clever indication of word and accent comes in W H Downing\u2019s 1919 Australian war glossary, Digger Dialects<\/em>, in a couple of definitions: Carksucker\u2014American soldier; Fooker\u2014English private. This enjoyment of the potential for wit in swearing is also seen in the description of the anti-gas Phenate-Hexamine or PH Helmet by Captains Robert Graves and J C Dunn of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, who famously described it as the \u201cgoggle-eyed (or googly-eyed) bugger with the tit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018If a whiff of gas you smell,
Bang your gong like bloody hell,
On with your googly, up with your gun\u2014
Ready to meet the bloody Hun\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If you\u2019re in London, you can see the posters, ephemera, and artifacts for yourself: the show opens today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lately I\u2019ve been listening to the excellent BBC documentary World War I, which you can download and then listen to, incongruously, while waiting on line at the grocery store. The series presents the listener with a multifaceted portrait of the Great War, but\u2014for obvious reasons, given the topic\u2014it\u2019s not exactly a laugh a minute. That\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[6005,14355,7479,14356,7740],"class_list":["post-72884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-british-library","tag-gallows-humor","tag-satire","tag-trench-warfare","tag-world-war-i"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Lighter Side of World War I<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein on the British Library\u2019s new exhibition, \u201cEnduring War: Grit, Grief, and Humour.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/19\/over-there\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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